ALBANY — The sisters are gone now, as are the students. The old Kenwood campus is a quiet place.

That's unusual. For most of its 160-year history, the parklike property in south Albany has been a busy home for young women training to become nuns or retired sisters, along with students of the Doane Stuart School.

The 74-acre campus now seems like it's hibernating. Its future is unsure: the Society of the Sacred Heart has put the Kenwood Convent site up for sale, and the Catholic order says it is at peace with the possibility that historic buildings there, including a gorgeous chapel, could be demolished.

"The decision didn't come easy and it didn't come fast," said Allison Bashkoff, chief financial officer for the Kenwood Convent. "(But) it was too expensive to hold on to this asset."

Once, anyone who wanted to become a Society of the Sacred Heart nun came to Albany and Kenwood. But as the population of sisters aged and overall numbers declined, the convent became a retirement village and nursing home. Healthy sisters tended to the ailing.

Eventually, the society concluded it couldn't afford to continue at Kenwood, given the paucity of women joining the order. In 2005, it resolved to sell and devote proceeds to the care of the remaining sisters.

The sisters gradually moved to other care facilities, a process that ended last November. Doane Stuart moved, too, after a failed bid to buy the entire campus. The school — formed in 1975 following the merger of St. Agnes School and the Kenwood Academy — is in Rensselaer now.

Brian Hoffman, who has worked on the campus for 33 years and continues to maintain its buildings and grounds, is still adjusting to the quiet. He said the lively and "hopping" campus he remembers has been silenced.

The society is asking $9 million for the property, which is tucked between South Pearl Street and Southern Boulevard, near the city's southern border. A cemetery there is not part of the sale.

The site has tremendous assets: With easy highway access, it is one of the largest developable parcels in the city. Its three main and inter-connected buildings include more than 200,000 square feet of space, and they're in good condition. (A Doane Stuart expansion was built in the 1960s.)

But there are also challenges. The Capital Region already is dotted with dozens of former religious buildings needing redevelopment money. And how many developers are interested in owning a chapel built in the mid-1800s, no matter its beauty?

Much of the campus is thickly wooded and hilly. Demolishing the buildings would be expensive and, potentially, a public-relations headache, considering the affection many feel for the structures.

Indeed, Susan Holland of the Historic Albany Foundation, calling the campus one of the Capital Region's most special places, said her group would oppose Kenwood demolitions and might push for the preservation of much of the site.

Holland noted that structures on the property, dating to before its 1859 purchase by the Society of the Sacred Heart, were designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, a well-regarded architect, and the entire campus might have been designed by Andrew Jackson Downing, a prominent landscape architect.

"It's obviously worth saving," Holland said.

Developers have kicked the tires at Kenwood: Last year, before the campus was even officially for sale, a consortium of investors planned to buy the site for a mixed-use development that was to include housing, a hotel and other commercial uses.

It's unclear if reuse of the historic structures was part of the proposal, which is now dead. "The economy killed that deal," said Ann MacAffer, a broker at CB Richard Ellis/Albany, which is handling the property sale.